The Spirit of Zen: A Way of Life, Work, and Art in the Far East

By Alan Watts

Written when Watts was just twenty-one, this is the book that introduced a generation of English readers to Zen. Drawing heavily on D.T. Suzuki, he sketches Zen's history, its koans and its masters, and shows how the tradition permeates everything from swordsmanship and tea ceremony to landscape painting. Remarkably lucid for so young an author, it remains the clearest short doorway into the subject.